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Donald Trump may be spending much of his time complaining that NATO members aren’t paying their bills, but he has been compiling his own. The latest is a whopping $350 million judgment courtesy of Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, who came down with a decisive thud on Trump’s business dealings in his civil fraud trial. Engoron not only demanded that Trump cough up the $350 million, but also banned him from any business activities in New York over the next three years.
Eric and Don Jr. got dinged for $4 million each. Donald Sr. plans to appeal the ruling. But he has thirty days to post a bond or come up with the cash. Either way, he’s going to be feeling the financial pinch. Adding insult to injury: an independent monitor will continue to oversee the company’s transactions.
Throughout his recent trial, Trump moaned and groaned about the iniquity of the judicial system. As with the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, he did himself no favors by badgering the judge and jury. His petulant outbursts sabotaged whatever feeble defense his lawyers were trying to concoct. Add in the Carroll case and Trump owes around $434 million so far.
Small wonder that Trump is trying to raid what’s left of the Republican National Committee coffers. He plans to install his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair of the RNC. Her comment to Newsmax: “Every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC — that is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country.” So much for any Republican candidates down ballot!
When Trump speaks at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago tonight, he will surely continue to fulminate about the unfairness of the judicial system. He is only for law and order when it serves his own purposes. Otherwise, the six-time bankrupt businessman has spent an entire career trying to avoid taking responsibility for his financial machinations. Now his financial empire is once more starting to display cracks that could turn into a wholesale collapse.
Who’s going to pay the price? It remains confounding that the GOP has wedded its political, not to mention financial, fortunes to someone who was more conman than businessman. Trump’s dismal electoral record does not seem to have shaken the GOP, but he is more than likely to suffer fresh reverses in coming trials. His criminal trial in New York for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up his hush money for Stormy Daniels is set to start up in late March. The flap over Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis will soon dissipate. And the US Supreme Court may well elect not to hear Trump’s contrived case for presidential immunity from prosecution. Indeed, at a moment when Russian president Vladimit Putin has just murdered his political opponent Alexei Navalny, the claims of Trump’s lawyers that a president can terminate anyone he pleases is bound to ring clangorously.
Teflon Don no more? It’s starting to look like it.
